Shooting VIdeo: Golden Rules & Video Tricks

5 Deadly Sins of Amateur Video


Smooth Panning Trick

Final Cut Intro

Here is a basic tool tutorial for Final Cut Pro X:

Adjusting Brightness and Contrast

1) Some times a photo comes out too dark or too bright. This tutorial will help you adjust those issues. Open an image file you want to adjust.

2) Next go to the "Image" menu and drag down to "Adjustments" and then select "Brightness/Contrast."

3) Now you should see this little window.

4) Now click and drag on the slider controls.

5) You can see if you drag it to the left the image becomes darker and if you drag to the right the image becomes brighter.

6) Experiment with the contrast controls as well to see how you can make darks darker and lights lighter.

Layers

1) Layers are used for working on separate parts of an image. They allow you to apply different effects, blend, paint, and do many other tasks without effecting everything in the image. The layers palette is shown in the image above.

2) In order to see how layers work go ahead and make a selection. Then select the "Copy" command from the "Edit" menu.

3) Next go to the layers palette and click on the "New Layer" button.

4) Now you should see two layers in the layer palette. Click on the grey and white checkerboard box on the newly created layer.

5) Now go to the "Edit" menu and select "Paste." This should have placed your copied selection in the new layer. You can see the dog's head appears in the checkerboard area.

6) Now we will see how layers work. Click the little eyeball next to the "background" layer. This will turn off the layer. The clicking the eyeball next to each layer allows you to turn a layer on or off.

7) You now can edit just one part of the image if you like without effecting the other part or "layer." One last tip: You must make sure that you have selected the layer that you want to edit; just click on it in the layers menu.

Paint Brush Tools

1) Create a new file and make sure the background contents is set to white.

2) Next select the brush tool.

3) Make sure you DO NOT select the history brush by mistake; it looks just like the brush tool but it has a little arrow on it.

4) With the brush tool select click and drag anywhere on your picture.

5) If your brush paints too big or too small you can change the size by clicking "Brush" in the upper right hand of the screen.

6) Next you can click and drag on the master diameter slider and drag it right and left to change the brush size.

7) Now when you paint the brush size can be bigger or smaller. I made it quite a bit bigger.

8) You may want to use different colors as well. For this we will use the color picker. Click on the color that is in the front (red in my case).

9) Now you should see the color picker window.

10) Click on any of the colors in the vertical rainbow bar to choose a new color to paint with.

11) You can also pick how bright, dark or strong your color will be by clicking around on the square.

12) I chose a purplish color and then painted some more.

13) Now you can choose different style brushes as well. Go back to the brush in the upper right hand corner and click on it.

14) You can click on any of the brushes. Scroll down to see more brushes.

15) I selected a star shaped brush and painted some stars.

16) Next you may want to try adjusting the flow and opacity of the brushes. They are at the top of the screen near the menus.

17) Adjust the flow and opacity percentages down and experiment a bit. You can see that they make the brush have a lighter "touch." The stars at the top of my picture came out much lighter.... Success!

Free Transform Tool

1) We are starting with the picture we just left off with from the Select Tools & Copy/Paste Tutorial.

2) Start with clicking on the object (the dog) with the "Move" tool.

3) Then go to the "Edit" menu drag down to "Free Transform"

4) You should now see a box that surrounds your object.

5) There will be little squares should appear at the corners of the object.

6) Next, hold down the "Shift" key, click on the little squares at the corners of the object and drag the object larger or smaller. Boom... Done!

Selection Tools & Copy/Paste

1) Selection tools are used to cut out parts of an image. Select the lasso tool in the toolbar.

2) Next click and hold down on the mouse while you drag around the part of your image that you would like to cut out. The green arrows show the line I drew around the dogs head which will be the area I am cutting out.

3) Now when you release the mouse button it will show a crawling dashed line to show that the selection has been made.

4) Next select the move tool from the toolbar.

5) Now when you click and drag on your selection you can move it around. Next you may want to put this part of the picture into another file.

6) Select Copy from the "Edit" menu.

7) Create a new file or open another existing picture (Click here for instructions on creating a new file). And then select "Paste" from the "Edit" menu.

8) The dog's head has been successfully cut out and pasted into another picture.